Xen Project Software Overview

What is Xen?

Xen is an open-source baremetal hypervisor that runs most of the world's cloud infrastructure.

Here are some key features:

• Small footprint and interface. Because Xen uses a microkernel design, with a small memory footprint and limited interface to the guest, it is more robust and secure than
• Operating system agnostic: Most installations run with Linux as the main control stack (aka "domain 0"). But a number of other operating systems can be used instead, including NetBSD and OpenSolaris.
• Driver Isolation: Xen has the capability to allow the main device driver for a system to run inside of a virtual machine. If the driver crashes, or is compromised, the VM containing the driver can be rebooted and the driver restarted without affecting the rest of the system.
• Paravirtualization: Fully paravirtualized guests have been optimized to run as a virtual machine. This allows the guests to run much faster than with hardware extensions (HVM). Additionally, Xen can run on hardware that doesn't support virtualization extensions.

Introduction to Xen Architecture

This page will explore the key aspects of Xen architecture that a user is likely to understand in order to make the best choices about Xen.

To the left is a diagram of the architecture of Xen. At the very bottom is the hardware. The Xen hypervisor runs on top of the hardware